Eclectic commentary from a progressive voice in the reddest part of the red state

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

We can still stop Trump

The Constitution affords us ways to stop Trump from becoming president. The most immediate, and

at this time the most effective, would be to get members of the Electoral College to not vote for him. The term “faithless” is unfortunate, but in context, accurate. A more persuasive and better term is “patriotic.”

If you all have either family or friends the states that went for Trump, you can contact the electors. Time is short, but if you could be part of this campaign and get information to family and friends in those states about contacting the electors for their state, it might help. I have provided a link to a site that gives anyone the tools to contact their electors and I have pasted in the body of the letter I wrote to 28 Texas electors. The original letter wasn’t up to my standards and, after learning electors have asked for an intel briefing on the Russian hacks, I made sure to include that issue in my letter.

We all have a stake in this. Please get this information to anyone else you know who shares these concerns. We have less than a week.

Letter to Electors:

I am writing to you in your capacity as a presidential elector. While I may or may not believe that Hillary Clinton’s popular margin of victory ought to convince the electors to vote for her, I am writing to ask you to choose her because the Electoral College was designed specifically to bar men like Donald Trump from the presidency.

Our presidential system in place since 1804, empowers the electors to use their wise judgment to choose our president. Whatever we may think of this system now, there were sound reasons for it then and now. Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Paper 68 explains the Electoral College is intended to protect the presidency from occupants “who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” Donald Trump not only demonstrates he lacks the requisite qualifications, he has also demonstrates himself to be a liar, even in the face of documented written and electronic proof.

If that isn’t reason enough, his mocking the disabled and open disrespect of women and others are also disqualifications. But, even if the two reasons I’ve cited aren’t enough for you, two other reasons are far more important. It is clear Mr. Trump has already perverted our laws and ethics by using the presidency to enrich himself and his family in violation of Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the Constitution.

More importantly are the revelations this past weekend, in which the intelligence community confirmed what 17 agencies found this past summer: The Russians, at Mr. Trump’s invitation, meddled with the election, both with a propaganda and disinformation campaign and hacking voting machines. Whether Mr. Trump’s alliance with Vladimir Putin makes him a Manchurian Candidate or a traitor is irrelevant at this point. I beg with you to agree with me that our great country cannot elect a person about whom we have such serious doubts.

I am grateful for your service to our nation as an elector. You may in fact believe that Donald Trump would make a better president than Hillary Clinton or anyone else. But if you share my fear that Mr. Trump would sell out our country to a foreign power, then I encourage you to exercise the power granted you by the Constitution. Please join the 156 “faithless” electors in our nation’s history by putting country above party and blocking Donald Trump from the presidency. Hamilton would have wanted you to do so.